China’s $10 Million Artist Pursues Spartan Life in NYC

"Forever Lasting Love" by Zhang Xiaogang. His 1988 triptych sold for $10.2 million at Sotheby's in Hong Kong in 2011. Source: Sotheby's via Bloomberg

April 3 (Bloomberg) -- “Every morning I wake up between 7
a.m. and 8 a.m., have a cup of coffee, read the news and head to
the studio,” says artist Zhang Xiaogang, “where I stay until
10 p.m. to 11 p.m.”

It’s a Spartan routine for China’s priciest living artist,
who achieved that status when his triptych titled “Forever
Lasting Love” sold for $10.2 million at a Hong Kong auction in
2011.

His latest works, a mix of paintings and sculptures, are
now on view at the Pace Gallery in New York’s Chelsea area where
the opening last week attracted several hundred guests.

Four new canvases of parents and children and dreary rooms
hang in one wing of the 8,000-square-foot gallery. In the main
area, pedestals display 17 sculptures, including a 6-inch-tall
head of a young girl and a bust of a bespectacled young man
measuring 5 feet and weighing 600 pounds. Each sculpture was
hand- or spray-painted, with some textures recalling clay or
marble.

Zhang still lives in China where his works were banned
until 1997, he said. The series that attracted Chinese censors
and Western patrons was called “Bloodline: Big Family” and was
inspired by a trove of family photographs from the days of the
Cultural Revolution.

In 2006, a “Bloodline” canvas fetched $979,200 at
Sotheby’s in New York. At Pace, the prices are $50,000 to
$250,000 for sculptures and $550,000 to $1.2 million for
paintings. Most works sold within the show’s first week.

Moving Forward

“Since 2006, I am trying to move forward as an artist,”
said Zhang, 56, through a translator during an interview at
Pace. “But whenever people come to my studio, they always ask
about the work I did 20 years ago.”

Bald and bespectacled, Zhang looks like an older
incarnation of the children in his new paintings and sculptures.
We spoke on the eve of the opening, as a forklift moved heavy
sculptures around and assistants measured and hung the
paintings.

The sculptures were cast at the Polich Tallix Fine Art
Foundry in upstate New York, which has produced works for
artists including Jeff Koons and Claes Oldenburg.

Zhang spent the past month in New York, painting the
sculptures by hand in a temporary studio on West 18th Street.
They look like three-dimensional versions of his “Bloodline”
characters: a girl with pigtails, a boy in sailor cap, naked
infants.

Another Idea

Overall, preparations for the show took three years, Zhang
said, and came down to the wire. The last bronze was completed
at 10 p.m. on Tuesday before the Thursday opening.

“It’s hard to get the work away from him,” said Arne
Glimcher, founder of Pace. “He paints it, then he gets another
idea and he adds to it.”

In new paintings, the adults and children occupy sparsely
furnished rooms, with walls painted green and gray and bonsai on
side tables.

“It’s a typical Chinese setting from the 1970s,” said
Zhang. “My parents kept this color until the 1990s.”

“The Position of Father” depicts a toddler leaning back
in an armchair as if he were an adult and wearing blue pajamas
with a big hole in the front.

“That’s a typical Chinese onesie,” said Zhang. “We
didn’t have diapers. It was very convenient.”

In one painting, a neatly folded white shirt and blue
trousers are laid out on a bed.

“It’s the outfit I wanted the most as a child,” said
Zhang. “We could not afford it and I was very envious of the
boys who had it.”